The hauling of freight of assorted shapes, sizes and weights has established the need for a carrier to simply and conveniently equip the interior of a standard freight hauling vehicle with means to accommodate the freight, without substantially reducing the interior load capacity of the vehicle.
In the body of a typical railway car or truck, a horizontal bed or floor is provided for supporting articles to be transported. The articles are placed on this bed, and depending upon the size or weight of the articles, they may be stacked upon each other at two or more levels. In many instances, however, the stacking of the articles may be impractical due to the size, weight, configuration, or fragileness thereof in which case, substantial amounts of space within the interior of the body may be unusable. As an example, when the articles are of a somewhat fragile character, damage to the articles can occur if stacked upon one another. The problem being that the weight of the upper articles could cause damage to the lower articles. In those instances, it is often necessary either to avoid stacking in tiers or to minimize the amount of stacking. The end result in most cases is a loss of usable cubic footage.
Moreover, some articles are difficult to load due to the different shapes thereof, which creates various problems. For example, even if freight articles at a lower level will not be damaged from weight when other articles are stacked thereon, the stacking operation itself may be quite irregular and inefficient due to the different shapes of the articles at the lower level. This incompatibility can cause the freight at the upper level to move, shift sideways, or fall and become lodged in between the freight at the lower level which hinders the unloading operation and may damage the freight itself.
Attempts have been made to alleviate some of these problems by incorporating intermediate decks in vehicles. In such vehicles, stacking problems can be eliminated since the deck will support the weight of the upper articles. However, vehicles with permanent decks have several negative aspects to be considered. First their adjustability is limited in many cases to one fixed height. Second, they are unable to divide in half and form two separate decks when the size and shape of certain articles deem it necessary. Third permanently installed decks weigh approximately 3000 lbs. in a large trailer. Consequently when the decks are not needed, the additional unwanted weight can have a dramatic effect on shipping costs. Finally, the use of other collapsible or removable intermediate decks has not met with much success due to functional limitations and inefficiencies in design that render the decks impractical for use in general freight operations.
In order to avoid the aforementioned problems, it is therefore desirable to provide a decking means that can utilize the unused space in vehicles which results from the shipping of fragile or odd sized freight. It is also desirable to provide a decking means that can be used alternatively as a bracing means to prevent damage caused by the forward, backward and sideway movement of freight. It is further desirable that such decking and bracing means be capable of installation by a single person and be readily assembled or disassembled as the size and shape of the freight changes from one shipment to another. It is also desirable to provide an alternative decking and bracing means that can function without sidewall mounted tracks so as to be useful in load carrying bodies with sidewalls not capable of supporting heavy weight.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,468,101 and 2,467,681 disclose the use of sidewall mounted tracks and cross bars for forming a means to support or brace freight within a vehicle. However, the arrangements formed with the sidewall tracks and cross bars are not sufficiently versatile to accommodate certain types of freight without wasting space.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,160,870 discloses a partitioning means which extends completely across the vehicle forming a bulkhead. The partitioning means is not used as a load bearing member.
It is therefore a general object of this invention to provide a vertically adjustable decking and bracing means for freight carrying vehicles which will provide maximum efficiency in the loading thereof.
It is a more specific object of this invention to provide an alternative decking and bracing means for freight carrying bodies in which the alternative means is non-dependent on sidewall mounted tracks.
It is still a further object of this invention to provide lading separating and bracing means for a freight carrying body in which one or more of these means can be easily disassembled and stored therein or elsewhere when not in use.
It is yet another object of this invention to provide in a freight carrying body a freight supporting means including intermediate decks that can be adjusted vertically to meet the various vertical dimensions of the freight beneath it.